Cyanide & Happiness

The environment has been shaped by countless extinctions over millennia. The environment does not need white knights, it simply is. Another entirely is what we would like it to be. A whale "tracking the ethical and environmental impacts of its pod’s consumption" would be at a competitive disadvantage to those who don't. specially given that they are carnivores who don't have the privilege of omnivore white knighting. Not eating meat is them dying en masse unless one of them is able to survive off of plants somehow, if at all. Bulls will skewer anyone who go near their territory, and they are herbivores, nature does not share your concerns not because of intellectual capacity but because they don't need to.

We can track the ethical and environmental impacts, but we only do so within our own perspective. It is a trait of any animal to show empathy for that which they do care about, and ignorance and even disdain for that which they do not. People who care about the feelings of animals, feelings they do have, do so because they have the luxury of not becoming fodder. Not only people, but animals in captivity who are fed and need not worry about where their food or if they are food have been shown to express this notion as well.

Life exists to survive. Don't think your ethical and environmental concerns will afford you likewise considerations from other animals, from humans to whales alike. Just because you feel and because they feel does not mean they will care. You pick your fights, you want to care about whales, you might end up caring too much about everything before ever finding yourself getting kicked to the ground because of a dystopian hellscape that was too out of focus for you coming from your own species. Will you ask if the concerns you chose to erect walls around helped you out then?

Our ecosystems are doomed to change just as we are, but we should not accelerate their change unless we are ready to change ourselves. Unfortunately, the entire ocean is changing now, and if anything major governments driven by profits have made sure we are not ready to change. F-ing whaling is the least of my worries nowadays because so much more has become concerning.

To be fair, a lot of humans also seem to lack the intellectual capacity to consider the ethical implications of their consumption, specially when confronted with the unimaginable cruelty and suffering we cause to animals just to eat something tasty with low individual effort.